


Arno Doesn't Know

by Izzy_Grinch



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Arno feels worthless AF, Bathing/Washing, Caretaking, Comfort Reading, Drinking to Cope, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gentleness, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrations, Loneliness, M/M, Self-Pity, and lonely as never before, but he doesn't know that he is loved, caring de Sade, lonely Arno, post Brotherhood exile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 07:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19825357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch
Summary: The Brotherhood has banished him; he's no one, he's lost. But the marquis − oh, the marquis finds him.





	Arno Doesn't Know

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Арно не знает](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19825096) by [Izzy_Grinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch). 



> It is important to emphasize that in the original version of this story Arno uses a formal "you" every time he addresses de Sade, due to their age and social status difference, and Arno's personal wish to be as cold and indifferent with the marquis as possible (yeah, well, the last one– he kinda fails it).

He drinks because it seems to be the only thing he is really good at. He drinks because there is nothing else left for him. He gets drunk, hoping to maybe cleanse his body of that worthlessness, and impatience, and eagerness − any glimpse of emotions which appear to be unnecessary there, among the suppressing, corrupting, damned walls of Paris. He drinks without taking note of what it is currently in his mug, it is all the same now: Versailles wines from someone’s cellar or bitter ale for a couple of coins, it doesn’t matter. He is saved while he has money; and once they’re gone the streets will take and decompose him, another desperate shadow to pave the city roads; no one watches where they place their feet anyway. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to return to the cafe; he likes to think − he doesn’t care − that he is not, _Theatre_ has never been his entirely, the documents list only Bellec’s name and the Brotherhood masters’. He’s not the part of the Brotherhood, not anymore, just like Bellec with a tiny difference of him, Arno, being alive, still. Such a pity.

A servant boy shakes him awake, placing a full pint of fizzing and splashing booze in front of him.

“This one’s up on the gentleman next to the window. But after you’re done... my master wants you... gone.”

Arno looks at the owner of the tavern − that godforsaken shithole − and the man winces at him; everyone does as soon as they see Arno these days, for such an irritating stain he is, an unwanted street scum. Then he finds the single window smeared with smoke and people’s breath from the inside, and with recent rain from the outside, and now it is his turn to wince. He swallows the beer in three abrupt gulps and drags himself out from the table and out into the streets, smelling of sodden horse manure. The night may disguise the physical ugliness of this city but it surely keeps the odors and roots out the sounds, the most horrifying ones he doesn’t have to react to anymore. How can he save everyone if he can’t even save himself? The steps following him are leisured, they aren’t slow − they are measured and light, hunting him down, and Arno himself used to walk like this too, barely touching ground, without confusing left with right. Arno shivers and feels a sudden whip of panic. He turns around; the street lanterns, the gaps of windows with sparse flares inside, the blurry silhouettes tilt over.

“What’s it all about? Came to finish me off? Was there poison on the bottom?”

The marquis takes him by the elbow, guiding him along the houses − away from the musty taverns, away into the night. The marquis smiles, though Arno doesn’t really know if there’s a moment ever when he doesn’t smile; it’s said in the Bastille he laughed in the faces of guards, and they gritted their teeth, too scared to even touch him.

“On the bottom? What a neglect that would’ve been! Do believe, my dear Arno, if I was to actually bane you, I’d stir it thoroughly until the very last drop was dissolved, you wouldn’t feel anything at all − especially the need to ask such questions.”

He wants − _desires_ to fell nothing at all: no annoyance, no stink of the rats smashed by the carriages, no warmth of the hand, pressed to his side. They have different paths to take, Arno and de Sade, but he doesn’t try to escape. A neglect, he thinks. A neglect was his vaunted assassin’s duty. A neglect was − still is − Arno himself.

“Then what is it? Are you trying to make me drunk and take advantage of me?”

The fingers gently close on his forearm, where the tight straps of his hidden blade once were, over the stained and crumpled sleeve, while de Sade laughs.

“A thought of such tempting kind that I am pleasantly wounded it didn’t come to my own mind.”

Finally, Arno pulls his arm away, cloth slides against cloth, skin touches skin, the marquis’ palm briefly squeezes his own one, and Arno pushes himself off it torpidly, closer to the street corner, ending up with an abyss of a black alley, and then he bends down, like one of those men into whose bellies he used to put his blade before. It looks like blood to him at first, spreading between the cracks of the paving stones, but it is merely ale and wine, just wine and ale. Fixing his gaze to the whiteness of the offered handkerchief, Arno wipes his mouth with his own shirt. The tongue, burning of the spew, feels numb.

“−don’t need... your pittance...”

De Sade shrugs.

“Well, France could’ve used some.”

Arno manages to straighten himself up, scratching over the dump wall bricks; he once could climb even the sheerest, the smoothest masonry, but now he’s unlikely to climb even one short step.

“I have nothing to do with France anymore.”

The marquis’ grasp on his jaw is sturdy, when he pulls it up and blots Arno’s stubbly chin, as if he is a blind, barely alive puppy.

“You both are so equally and hopelessly stubborn.”

It’d be better if he really came to get rid of him; it’d be better if he came to mock him rather than curve his thin brows in disapproval, shame him as if Arno doesn’t know − as if he doesn’t know that he is the one to blame. Arno asks weakly: “Leave me be,” while he is guided somewhere, the hand on his waist, and de Sade snorts, almost offended like that one time when Arno blamed him: “You used me!” Well − who didn’t?

“I am known for my ability to never abandon my habits, my quill and the French prisons − for a long time at least.”

Suddenly, Arno is trapped in a late night carriage, where the smell of harness and horse sweat is strong enough to cloak his own; their knees touch when the vehicle turns, and Arno moves into the farthest corner and stays there, pressing his temple to the rocking curtain. The deceptive clearness of his weary mind, temporarily granted by the emptying of his stomach, is being slowly wrapped in a sticky veil again.

“I won’t− can’t help you anymore. The Brotherhood refused my services.”

With a corner of his eye, Arno notices how attentively de Sade’s watching him, incessantly as if soaking him in. Such a disappointing sight he must be. In a month or two he will be covered with cuts and bruises left by the drunken fights, and maybe then he will become a decent addition to _le Cour des Miracles._

“I am more than fairly certain those mysterious assassins of yours were not the ones to inspire you to help with, say, elimination of that horrid order concerning my the least desirable date with a guillotine. And neither...” he sighs, “...it was my personal charm.”

Arno leaves him without response. He recognizes the streets they’re passing; he’d recognize them even eyeless, by touch only, every sore and lump and broken bone of theirs. Neither the Brotherhood, nor the Order can change even the tiniest bit. Neither the Brotherhood, nor the Order− He startles, dozed off, as if emerging from the water, when something covering him slips away and is replaced with the rainy chill; the marquis puts on and tidies his jacket, then exits the carriage and holds out a hand while keeping the door from closing back. Arno doesn’t move.

“You’ve come such a long way just to halt, dear Arno? Quite vexatious it is. Come,” he waves his hand in a welcoming gesture and eventually lets it fall, the bracelets clinking quietly. “At least let the coachman go.”

The brothel is full of the guffaw too loud and the light too bright; Arno feels a wave, a billow even, of disgust, and while struggling to endure it he realizes − it’s not a repulsion but a fear to be seen again and noticed, to be pulled into someone’s lives again, where he will only interfere and ruin everything, as much as arrogant he is. De Sade guides him by the shoulders straight to the stairs in the backyard, along the narrow corridor − above the heads of drunkards and whores and dregs, which are not so different from Arno himself. He’s led into a room with the air thick and the fireplace burning hot.

“A warm bath might come in handy.”

A bath filled just for him. Arno looks around, tensed and confused, and moves back stumbling upon de Sade behind him, as soon as two maids silently step from a gray wall. A snap of the marquis’ fingers is enough to send them away, unrequired, and after they leave de Sade leaves too.

Arno stares blankly at his own palms; he doesn’t know what’s about to happen next and what kind of business he’s needed here for, doesn’t know what’s the catch, the trick, what games the marquis intends to play this time. The water surface ripples, when he touches it on his way to the window − to open it, probably, to escape and run away? to break his neck, too clumsy now to climb the eaves? The water is so warm that he simply forgets the window. He shakes off his clothes and clenches his teeth when water overflows the bath. For a moment he barely knows how to breathe; his skin is tingling, his bones are almost aching. He lets go of the rims and sits there, holding his knees to his chest; his eyes are closed shut and eyelids are marked on the inside with a golden flash of fire.

He sits like this until a squeak of the worn-out floorboards makes him startle, toss his head up to see the intruder, and try to hide himself in the tiny space of almost cool now bathtub. The marquis approaches, curling the corners of his lips.

“What do you want?”

“Ah...” de Sade checks the water, flying his fingers close to Arno’s knee, and carefully takes a fresh portion from the burnout fireplace. “Many endeavor to understand my motives, however almost none of them are really trying to.”

“I’m not talking about your... books.”

“No?” de Sade exclaims as if he’s surprised.

He moves a high stool to the tub, and Arno stills, hunched, under the sudden warmth flowing from above. The ladle grazes the iron pot, splashes, and then turns over to coat him in water again. Arno slowly lowers his chin down, loosens his clenched fists. In the silent fluency of the streaming liquid he can hear the marquis sighing occasionally. Arno is still waiting for a request, a disguised command, an order even, but the marquis only says: “Close your eyes, Arno,” and as the water rushes through his hair, behind his ears, down his neck, bypassing his forehead pressed to his knees, Arno can’t hold a treacherous spasm, and in the steamy room his shoulders start to shudder violently − again, again and again.

De Sade fingers his locks, washing them, gently wrings them out, twisting into a heavy ponytail, and unfolds a wide piece of linen in front of him; it sticks to Arno’s body, and for a second he’s wrapped in an embrace, lasting no longer than a second. Their eyes meet, when the marquis nods at the clean clothes.

“...is it yours?”

The marquis grins as if at an elegant joke, and with a thumb traces the scar on Arno’s cheek.

“It is yours, Arno.”

A couple of doors away there is a bed waiting for him. Arno looks around. Someone on the ground floor starts to tap an intricate dance skillfully with their heels, and Arno lies down, exhausted. He is alone, but at the same time an entire city is there with him − city that isn’t falling apart, isn’t drowning, isn’t digging its own grave outside a church fence. The darkness in front of him is flashing with faces he mostly won’t ever see again. He tosses and turns while the blood thumps in his temples, echoing like in the damp catacombs, and sudden panic forces him to sit up, to press his burning hands to his face as if in attempt to hide, and he’s able to pull them away only hearing a tiny click of the door. It’s de Sade at the threshold, looking at him expectantly, holding a book, fingers between the pages marking the place he suspended his reading.

“What, you’re going to accompany me in the bed as well?”

“Not today, I’m afraid, my dear Arno, not today,” he pouts, then immediately shows his teeth in a thin and dangerous grin. “I was expecting to entertain myself with bedtime reading. The nights so full of such exquisite temptations are quite uncommon here.”

Under his sharp gaze Arno falls back on the pillows, soaked with his own sweat and wet hair; the noise is gone for now and replaced with a dry tap-tap-tapping of de Sade’s finger on the doorframe. And when he is about to finally leave him, Arno swallows a lump in his throat and asks:

“What− what’s that book?”

Frankly, he doesn’t care even if it’s the writings of de Sade himself; alone within four walls he feels like he’s back to the empty and forsaken estate of de la Sierre’s. Empty and forsaken.

The marquis simply says:

“Plato.”

He shuts the door smoothly and lights up some candles on the table in the opposite corner of the room; the sparks born of flint from the chimney shelf are dancing over his knuckles. He settles comfortably in a small armchair and after a long glance at Arno he opens the book from the beginning.

Arno listens to the soothing flow of his voice; the meanings are slipping away from him, the words are too fancy. De Sade turns another page.

“...My love, Alcibiades, which I hardly like to confess, would long ago have passed away, as I flatter myself, if I saw you loving your good things, or thinking that you ought to pass life in the enjoyment of them. But I shall reveal other thoughts of yours, which you keep to yourself; whereby you will know that I have always had my eye on you. Suppose that at this moment some God came to you and said: “Alcibiades, will you live as you are, or die in an instant if you are forbidden to make any further acquisition?” I verily believe that you would choose death. And I will tell you the hope in which you are at present living...”

He continues, and Arno doesn’t stop him, he just watches the prominent contour of the marquis’ face, his moving lips, the candle flames, steadily blurring away under his own lashes, and he doesn’t know how fast he falls asleep to dream without tipsy and frightening dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> De Sade reads Plato’s “Alcibiades I”. The English translation here is by B. Jowett.
> 
> The breathtaking illustration is made by Dinspair [https://www.deviantart.com/dinspair/art/A-hot-bath-COMMISSION-804705312]


End file.
